Stephanie, aperture priority AE is about the only auto function on my Zeiss Ikon - & there's no reason why you have to use it. Set in manual mode, it's a fully manual camera & you'd never know you had an auto-anything camera if you didn't look at the "A" on the shutter speed dial.

If you buy an M2, you'll be sacrificing a meter - & it certainly can't hurt to have one available. The Zeiss Ikon meter is spot on in my experience & the camera itself is beautifully built. In addition, you get 28 frame lines on the Ikon & a better viewfinder. If you like this camera except for the AE function, I don't think that should get in your way.

TTL metering is nice, but someone reminded me that I hardly ever use it anyway. :P The M2 is the perfect marriage of affordability and ruggedness that I want in a camera. Like the P, this will be a user camera that will see plenty of abuse most likely...I use my cameras hard. It's very important that they be very durable.

That said, I'm probably not getting *anything* any time soon. This is just something I'm toying around with.